A Few Words About Mahshid Amirshahi (Amir-Shahy)
Excerpts From An Introduction to Hezarbisheh :
Mahshid Amir-Shahy occupies a place
of choice in the gallery of Iranian authors. She started her career early in
life and was soon hailed by art critics for her precocious talent as well as
the high quality of her Writings. Her refined prose, which became more and more sophisticated from book to book, promotedher
to one of the most prominent figures of contemporary Persian literature.
Her lucid, colourful,
precise, sensitive and inimitable style is as much suited to brush her
characters as is in painting their surrounding world. The brilliance of her
writing is partly due to her vast vocabulary and generosity of vernacular. She
builds her characters up through their hold of the language and their
dialogues, constructed with a mastery unequalled in
Persian literature of our time.
The diversity of Mahshid Amir-Shahy's works makes it impossible to classify her
under any of those categories that befit so well other Iranian writers. Her
force of character and artistic rigour have kept her
from following the literary or political fashions that every now and again shake
and shape the intelligentsia of Iran. She has always stayed aloof from these
bustles that may bring quick and ephemeral fame for satisfying the demands of a
migratory public, but at the end prove fatal to the artistic essence of the
work.
Her ties with literature and politics remind one of
those of André Gide. As devoted as the latter to
creating literature of great value, she does not hesitate to intervene in
crucial public issues. She also has the courage to take a firm stand, at times
very unpopular, as did Gide in the case of Dreyfus,
or when faced with communism, or during the occupation of France.
At the dawn of the revolution that brought Khomeiny to power, Mahshid Amir-Shahy's deep respect for human dignity, so palpable in
her writings, made her take publicly position against the effervescence of
fundamentalism and fend for the slender chance of a secular democracy with all
her might. This standpoint forced her into exile, where she kept on writing her
novels as well as her fight against the Islamism.
Hezar Bisheh, a trilingual book (English, French,
Persian), in which the actual languages used by the author herself have been
maintained, contains a selection of her lectures, interviews and articles given
and written in exile. Her humanism and attachment to promoting a secular
democracy in Muslim countries are the leitmotiv of these elegant and powerful
texts.